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Asan, a novel by Vladimir Makanin (2008)
Rights sold: Albania - OMSCA-1, France - GALLIMARD, Germany - LUCHTERHAND, Netherlands - DE ARBEIDERSPERS, Poland - REBIS, Russia - IZDATELSTVO E, Slovenia - Modrijan, Spain - ACANTILADO, Turkey - ALFA
Winner of the 2008 Big Book Award
On the surface, Vladimir Makanin’s Asan is a stream-of-consciousness account of events in the life of the Russian manager of a military warehouse in Chechnia. Deeper down, Asan is less a book about Russia’s Chechen wars than a novel showing how war forces participants and observers to piece together narratives that explain or justify actions.
At the centre of Makanin’s narrive is major Aleksandr Sergeevich Zhilin, nicknamed Asan by his fellow officers. He finds himself running a supply depot during both the first and second wars, supplying the Russian troops with fuel--and running his own little business on the side. A basically honest man, Major Zhilin is still one of those...
Read moreADDENDUM TO OLD PHOTO ALBUM, a novel by Vladislav Otroshenko (2007)
Rights sold: Italy – Voland, Fanucci (magazine rights), France - Verdie, World English - Dalkey Archive Press
A magical realism masterpiece, this family saga is populated by surrealist characters, and narrated with a spicy and clownish language. A mysterious race of a greedy tribe leaded by a bizarre patriarch with a heroic past, all inhabiting the unexplored depths of a house as big as the world. Otroshenko's quirky and cute characters move, peck, amuse one another as if they were puppets of papier mâché, engaged in phantasmagoric adventures, enchanting and exhilarating. Otroshenko makes the entire history of mankind and of Russia to repeat itself endlessly, in concentric circles out of time and space.
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